Main description:

* Links the cultural agency of imaginative discourse to its capacity to address, challenge, and evoke a deep sociality characteristic of humans; * Brings together two prominent currents informing contemporary literary theory-affective and neurocognitive-evolutionary literary studies and work calling for renewed attentiveness to ethical and aesthetic qualities in literary works; * Develops and illustrates his arguments through analyses of a wide range of literary works

Contents:

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Literary Signification and Biocultural Sociality

Part I: A Transcultural Historical Phenomenon and its Implications for Literary Theory

Chapter One: Platonic Poetics and Axial Cultural Revolutions

Chapter Two: Literary Theory and the Task of Accounting for Axial Hermeneutics

Part II: Neurocognitive Underpinnings and Evolutionary Prehistories of Significance Discernment and Ethical Sense

Chapter Three: Literary Significance's Prehistory: Attentiveness, Affectivity, and Sociality

Chapter Four: Literary Significance's Prehistory: Trust, Subjectivity, and Symbolic Culture

Chapter Five: Affective Dissonance, Moral Sociality, and the Prehistory of Ethical Sense

Conclusion: Life Sciences, Cultural Studies, and Literary History

Bibliography

Index